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This week’s Metro column about liquid soap being evil created a brief flurry of debate on Twitter. I considered it unusually reactive and conservative of me. Usually I embrace future tech, leaving the eulogising of an idealised past to Nigel Farage and Stewart Lee, but some advancements are made simply to trick people to parting with more money for less and I feel that’s partly the case with liquid soap. Congratulations to the ad men and women who in a few short years have managed to convince most of the public that a bar of soap is no longer fit for purpose. A similar thing has happened to razors. My grandad shaved with a single blade (that he picked out of a packet and put in his razor), but in an attempt to make the let’s face it slightly feminising act of shaving seem more masculine, designers and ad men made razors with two blades and then three. Even at this point all comedians in the world were joking about where this would end and comically suggesting a five blade razor. Well that’s no longer a joke. The greedy razor blade manufacturers make us pay for five blades when one will do and even have that audacity to claim that the first blade shaves close, the second closer, the third closer still, making it perfectly clear that, unless you require your face hair neatly cut into tiny little segments that the first three or four blades are redundant as it’s the final one that does the close cutting.
The latest salvo to make men spend even more money on shaving has tried to address that crucial concern that when shaving a man has to sometimes move his mouth and hold his face in an odd position to get to every hair. So now they have created a Dyson-like roller razor that means you don’t have to do that any more. Although was it really a massive imposition? It didn’t take up any time. Are they really suggesting that men should be able to shave their faces without having to move them at all? That that constitutes any kind of progress. Who wants to waste valuable energy in engaging face muscles? If you’re too lazy to move your mouth a bit when you’re shaving then maybe you should just consider having a beard.
Anyway this is all fairly standard observational comedy fayre, as was my soap column, I thought. But the column prompted someone on Twitter calling themselves Sir Full English (and it’s got to the point where it is now impossible to tell parody accounts from the real thing any more as both as so weird and extreme) to say, "Grubby lefty 'comic' @Herring1967 moaning about liquid soap in @MetroUK. Piss off and get a wash..” I would have thought the UKIP mentality would be delighted that I was sticking up for 1950s soap, (just as Stewart Lee with his 80s obsession would have been delighted if I was championing Lynx or Insignia), but apparently this call for a return to the ways of the past was left wing and made me grubby. Ironically I was about to have a shower as I received this tweet, so I risked ruining my iPhone to provide evidence that I do wash sometimes and sent Sir Full English a photo of me under the shower. This seemed to shut up the parody man/genuine troll for a bit. I presume because he was furiously masturbating at the image. In fact I had clearly fallen into his ironic/unironic trap to reveal my nude shoulders.
In fact I would have two showers today as I would later go to the gym in Edinburgh and then return to the Stand flat where I was delighted to see they had mint shower gel. I know it’s hypocritical to use liquid shower gel, which does the same job as soap, but they had no soap in the flat and in any case I am only a man and I love the tingling effects that this particular cleaning products has on your nether regions. My anus was sparkling and new like it had been licked by the polar bear from the Fox’s glacier mint ads (an image that I am pleased to say came to me out of nowhere as I discussed the shower gel on stage tonight). It really perked up my day, I can tell you. It was like I had been rimmed by the invisible man who was using my mouse hole as a toothbrush. I can’t believe that the people who make this stuff don’t market it in this way. But unlike the razor and liquid soap people they know they have an amazing product that will sell through word of mouth.
My good mood was nearly spoiled when I went to get dressed for the gig and discovered that my suit trousers were missing. I had definitely had them this morning when I’d left the Newcastle hotel, but they must have slipped off the hanger at some point between leaving my room and arriving at the flat. Most likely on the longish walk from the car to the flat in Edinburgh. I had looped my belt over the top of the hanger which made it look like the trousers were still there, but they were gone. Had we realised straight away we might have found them again, but a quick search revealed nothing. Unless they were dropped in the hotel in Newcastle I can’t really see me getting my trousers back, which is a bit of a shame. I’d spent some money on a few show suits last summer and though this was the cheapest and the most worn of the four suits I got, it was still a nice one. Somewhere in Newcastle or Edinburgh a homeless man with exceptionally short legs is dressed like a minor count tonight. Given the retirement of Bagpuss I can’t see there’s any way I will be reunited with my trousers. It’s not the kind of thing anyone would hand in.
I overcame the loss and like a not racist Jeremy Clarkson I went on stage tonight with a suit jacket and jeans. I had a little over 100 people in, having failed to sell out this small venue, though the people of Edinburgh have patently had enough of me after 28 years of me clogging up their streets and dropping my clothes everywhere and making their landlords rich. But the Stand is one of the best venues in the world and it was a terrific atmosphere and I relaxed enough to discuss the highs and lows of the day, with an extended discussion of Haribos and how a professional comic can swallow a mouthful of the sweets as he talks if he has happened to come on stage with some still in his mouth. I am having so much fun with this show and it’s a good thing that I am open to putting in more chatty stuff. I’ve often thought that that was a bit cheap and lazy and that audiences are overly impressed with improvisation, when it’s actually much harder to write solid routines. But by keeping things loose at the beginnings of the halves and being happy to snap in and out of the scripted stuff, the performance becomes more relaxed and fun. I will put it all up on the next lord of the dance settee podcast - I particularly enjoyed trying to encourage a woman in the audience to come back to my flat for a platonic shower so that she could find out how good the mint shower gel was.
I had a couple of drinks at the venue and then headed back to the flat to spend a night of guiltless fun with my bottle of mint shower gel.
